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All these exciting stories and MORE
in this week's issue of CONSPIRACY JOURNAL!
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You've Heard About it...Now Here it
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SECRETS OF DEATH VALLEY –
MYSTERIES AND HAUNTS OF THE MOJAVE DESERT

Join Tim Beckley (Mr. UFO) and
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* Witness The Landing Of A UFO At Edwards Air Force Base Verified By An
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* Attend Mae West’s First Séance.

* Journey With The Creepy Charles Manson And His Crew Down A Mysterious
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* Hunt For Ghosts In The Death Valley Opera House.

* Keep Your Distance From The Albino Bigfoot Running Loose.

* Unravel The Puzzle Of The Lost Viking Ships Of The Desert.

SECRETS OF
DEATH VALLEY – MYSTERIES AND HAUNTS OF THE MOJAVE DESERT is a
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This
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Diane Tessman's DVD "Mystic of The Desert."

This incredible book
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- MYSTERIES OF THE RED PLANET DEPARTMENT -

Mars May Not Be Lifeless, Say Scientists

Carbon-rich organic molecules,
which serve as the building blocks of life, may be present on Mars
after all, say scientists - challenging a widely-held notion of the Red
Planet as barren.

When Nasa's two Viking landers picked up and examined samples of
Martian soil in 1976, scientists found no evidence for carbon-rich
molecules or biology.

But after the Phoenix Mars Lander discovered the chlorine-containing
chemical perchlorate in the planet's "arctic" region in 2008,
scientists decided to re-visit the issue.

They travelled to the Atacama Desert in Chile, where conditions are
believed to be similar to those on Mars.

After mixing the soil with perchlorate and heating it, they found that
the gases produced were carbon dioxide and traces of chloromethane and
dichloromethane - just like the gases released by the chemical
reactions after the Viking landers heated the Martian soil more than
three decades ago.

They also found that chemical reactions effectively destroyed all
organic compounds in the soil.

"Our results suggest that not only organics, but also perchlorate, may
have been present in the soil at both Viking landing sites," said the
study's lead author, Rafael Navarro-González of the National
Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.

But despite the excitement about the finding, the researchers warn it
is too early to conclude that the Red Planet has ever had life.

"This doesn't say anything about the question of whether or not life
has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look
for evidence to answer that question," said Chris McKay of Nasa's Ames
Research Center, California.

He explained that organics can come from either biological and non-bio
sources - many meteorites that have fallen on Earth have organic
material.

Perchlorate, an ion of chlorine and oxygen, could have been present on
Mars for billions of years and only manifest itself when heated,
destroying all the organics in the soil.
The Atacama desert, Chile The soil of the Atacama desert is believed to
resemble that of Mars

When scientists originally examined the data from the Viking probes,
they interpreted the chlorine-containing organic compounds as
contaminants from cleaning fluids carried on the spacecraft.

It is not yet clear whether the organic molecules are indigenous to the
Red Planet or have been brought by meteorites.

This will be one of the goals of upcoming missions to Mars. In 2011,
Nasa is planning to kick off its Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission,
with the Curiosity rover designed to search for organic material on the
planet.

Source: BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11201699

- OBITUARY DEPARTMENT -

Lt. Col. Wendelle C. Stevens Best Known UFO Researcher Has
Died

UFO research pioneer, Wendelle
Stevens (87) passed away on September 7, 2010, at his home in Tucson,
Arizona of respiratory failure.

Lt. Colonel (USAF Ret.) Wendelle C. Stevens was born in 1923 in Round
Prairie, Minnesota and joined the US Army in 1941. He transferred to
the Air Corps in1942 and became a pilot. He alternated his career
between pilot and Air Technical Service assignments with the Air
Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright Field. ATIC is where the
Blue Book Office for the study of UFOs was located.

In 1947, he was assigned to Alaska where data collecting equipment
onboard B-29s were detecting UFOs. He became interested in the subject
and started his collection of UFO photographs. Col. Stevens amassed one
of the largest collections of UFO photographs in the world. He served
as US Air Attach in South America and retired from the USAF in 1963.

He spent much of his adult life actively investigating UFO cases
despite harassment by the government. In December 1997, he received an
award for lifetime achievement at the First World UFO Forum in
Brazilia, the capital of Brazil.

Wendelle Stevens was the Director of Investigations for the Aerial
Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in Tucson, Arizona. He
investigated numerous contact cases, such as the Billy Meier case in
Switzerland.

He published more than 22 books concerning UFOs, and was a founder and
Director of the International UFO Congress. He recently transferred his
extensive photo collection, and library to Open Minds Production.

It was early April 1967. New
York journalist John A. Keel, 37, a former self-described “hard-boiled
skeptic” of things of a supernatural flavor, was confronting increasing
evidence that his original support for the UFO-ET theory was in need of
major revision (not to mention his views pertaining to the paranormal).

Little doubt his initial investigations in and around Point Pleasant,
West Virginia, in March and April 1967, came to truly alter his overall
perspective on the whole UFO question ver-ry dramatically.

Keel, the author of Jadoo,
published back in 1957, a book that he admitted “sneered at the
occult”, took a dim view of the reality of anything presumably
supernatural. In Jadoo, he
recounted his personal explorations and adventures in the Orient, where
he repeatedly exposed the magic tricks of fake mystics, fakirs and
snake charmers who catered to the superstitious locals and tourists in
that part of the world. Keel, after all, was an amateur magician, and
the wide-spread belief system of Jadoo, a Hindu word that meant black
magic, intrigued him and was the kind of high adventure this
self-described cliff-hanging journalist was addicted to. In the fall of
1954 it led Keel out of Egypt, where he had been studying the legendary
gali-gali magicians, to exotic India, which was rife with practitioners
and believers in Jadoo.

Keel had initiated his UFO investigations full-time in 1966. “I tried
to adopt a very scientific approach to ufology, and this meant that I
scoffed at the many contactee reports,” Keel wrote in his 1970 book, Operation Trojan Horse. “But as my
experiences mounted and investigations broadened, I rapidly changed my
views.”

Instead of looking to far off outer space locations for the answers,
John Keel began to suspect that we were dealing largely with a
terrestrial-based phenomenon. Keel had a number of UFO sightings while
in West Virginia, but he wrote that his best one occurred on top of a
high hill in Gallipolis Ferry during the wee hours of the morning of
April 3, 1967. It was at about 1:35 a.m. when he observed a clearly
defined saucer-shaped object, an estimated 20-30 feet across, that was
“glowing red with greenish upper surface” and had “red lights or
‘portholes’ around (the) perimeter.” It appeared to land behind some
trees a short distance away from his automobile, in which just moments
before he had been relaxed and listening to the Long John Nebel radio
program being broadcast from New York, while chewing on a candy bar.

The very next afternoon Keel led Macon County Sheriff George Johnson
and Deputy Millard Halstead up the hill to where he had had his
encounter. They checked the area over with a Geiger counter and looked
for any physical trace evidence, but nothing abnormal turned up,
although one odd thing did happen. As Sheriff Johnson had been driving
up the hill a strange sound issued from his radio, which wasn’t even
turned on at the time (and, in fact, turned on with a key, and the key
wasn’t in the lock). “It sounded like the voices on a speeded-up
phonograph record,” Keel wrote.

In addition, Deputy Halstead stated that five months earlier he had
heard that same noise come over his radio. It happened in the McClintic
Wildlife Station on Wednesday, November 15, 1966, when he sat in his
car with frightened young witnesses to what would become the “Mothman”
legend.

Across the Ohio River from Gallipolis Ferry, West Virginia, is
Gallipolis, Ohio. One day Keel was introduced by a local journalist
named Mary Hyre to a respected, credible woman who insisted on
anonymity. She hesitantly described her encounter. It had happened
several months earlier, the previous November. It was somewhere around
7 or 8 p.m., she was outside and getting ready to leave her job site
and go home when saw a “big cylinder” silently land a mere 20 feet from
her. Two normal looking men got out and approached her. They seemed
heavily tanned, had pointed noses, pointed chins and high cheekbones.
“Their voices were sort of singsongy and high-pitched,” she told Keel.
“It was like listening to a phonograph record played at the wrong
speed. And they kept asking me for the time. They said ‘What is your
time?’ two or three times. Finally they just walked back to the thing
and it took off.”

Keel began frequently finding this apparent alien curiosity and
confusion about our time in many of his investigations, as well as
these strange voices and anomalous radio-related events. On April 14,
1967, at about 9 p.m., a UFO encounter reportedly occurred near
Melville, New York, an area that Keel came to investigate quite a bit.
In an internet report posted by Mark Rodeghier, it reads: “A motorist
saw a glowing object overhead, suddenly his car engine stalled, and a
smaller circular metallic object landed beside the road. His car radio,
which had been turned off, began to broadcast in a strange language. A
tiny metallic robot like figure appeared in the doorway of the object.
It then dug up some dirt and placed it inside the craft. The doorway
then closed, the object then turned a bright red color and rose into
the sky emitting a whirring sound. It appeared to join the large
glowing craft overhead.”

Keel described unusual signals and “unidentified voices” reportedly
coming out of CB radios and walkie-talkies, adding that “people with
all types of walkie-talkies have sworn to me that they’ve picked up
sounds ‘like a speeded up phonograph record’ while in the vicinity of
reported saucer sightings.”

Keel investigated a pretty high degree of bewildering contactee and MIB
activity in the vicinity of Long Island’s now legendary Mount Misery,
located near Melville. I visited this strange site myself with a friend
back in April 1972, and corresponded with a couple of New York
researchers who had been investigating this place back then. One of
them, however, reported encountering a mysterious man-like dark figure,
7-8 foot tall, at this location, and even underwent the contactee
experience himself, leaving New York to head out west in search of the
legendary Lost Dutchman Mine that his entities had promised him that
they’d lead him to. He also reported that strange voices came in on his
television set. His friend Michael back in Manhattan hasn’t seen him
since he left town in his van back in 1971.

Recently L.I.P.I. (Long Island Paranormal Investigators) posted on the
internet details of their investigations at Mount Misery. During their
on-site investigation a mysterious “voice” spoke with them over their
walkie talkie units. They reported: “While normally radio transmissions
are not a reliable source this voice remained constant for the entire
period and was clearly responding to our verbal (not transmitted)
comments and questions! It is highly unlikely any one was around
clandestinely observing the group. There is historical precedence for
EVPs being heard via radio.”

Indeed there is, and as Keel pointed out long ago, this activity
surfaced within the early 1950s contactee community itself. In his
book, Our Haunted Planet
(1971), Keel described how amateur anthropologist and contactee George
Hunt Williamson claimed that back in 1952 he was present when an
amateur radio operator was allegedly communicating with “space people.”
This radioman would ask a question and an answer would come back. Then
without warning he suddenly switched to 160 meters and asked another
question and got an immediate response! “Any radioman knows that no
power on Earth would have enabled any operator to know where he was
switching to!” Williamson pointed out. “Even if Mr. R had told the
other operator that he was going to switch to 160 meters, still they
would not have found him on that band until after the question had been
asked.”

Keel also described how at California’s then popular contactee conclave
Giant Rock in 1954, a speaker described how the “space people” could
even “read the mind of a radio operator.” He stated: “In one case
involving something in the nature of mind reading at a distance, these
entities gave the answer to a discussion going on in a room and not
taken up or referred to on the radio.”

“Ham operators in flap areas have cautiously reported all kinds of
manifestations, including the materialization of entities in their
radio shacks,” Keel also wrote. During a trip through the Midwest in
1967, Keel met a Ham radio operator who he stated had been undergoing a
long series of strange experiences. The area he lived in had had a lot
of UFO activity and this radioman told Keel that he had been hearing
unusual guttural voices from his speakers, even when his receiver was
turned off! (Is this beginning to sound familiar?)

Early on in my ufological non-career I corresponded back in 1971 with
an early contactee who shared, “I am still working with the ‘Space
People’ as some choose to call them and am often contacted by them,
both in person and by two-way radio. Éas I saidÉwe do use
two-way radio from time to time (but) mostly to confirm locales where I
am to meet them or their ship.”

The famous electrical genius Nikola Tesla described hearing mysterious,
unexplained radio signals in his lab as early as 1899, and heard them
for many years afterwards. The initial ones that he received were
reportedly more like morse code type transmissions, and then around
1918 he began to hear voices. In 1925, he wrote: “I am hearing more
phrases in these transmissions that are definitely in English, French
and German. If it were not for the fact that the frequencies I am
monitoring are unusable for terrestrial radio stations, I would think
that I am listening to people somewhere in the world talking to each
other. This cannot be the case as these signals are coming from points
in the sky above the earth.”

Author Tim Swartz, in his book, The
Lost Journals of Nikola Tesla, speculated: “The mysterious
signals that Tesla received could be linked to what is now known as
Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). Tesla was one of the first men to
experiment with the necessary electronic receiving equipment. The very
same equipment, albeit more sophisticated than Tesla had access to, is
being used today to receive EVP.”

Going back again to Keel’s Our
Haunted Planet, he may have waxed prophetic when he concluded
with how incidents of mysterious alien radio signals, even images of
“spacemen” on television sets (now a familiar description of the EVP
and ITC, Instrumental Transcommunication), all seemed to have been on
the increase since 1965. “It sounds like a cliché science
fiction plot, but a time may come when a general message to the human
race may suddenly spurt from every receiver on Earth in every
language,” he wrote. “Wouldn’t that be a kick in the teeth!”

Ouch! Indeed it would! I have recently spoken with my good friends
Sandy Nichols and Bret and Gina Oldham, all extensively involved in
first-hand EVP work (much of which I’ve been a frequent participant in
over the last several months), about how it seems to us as though
paranormal activity may be on the increase (or at least it seems to be
in the circles in which we’ve been traveling recently). This has
brought about conversations in which we wondered if there might indeed
be some credence to the speculations of some folks who feel that the
“veil between the worlds is growing thinner,” or something along those
lines.

In the late Harold Sherman’s 1974 book, You Can Communicate With The Unseen World,
he devoted a chapter to the EVP subject. In fact, a noted paranormal
researcher, Dr. Walter Uphoff, a professor at the University of
Colorado, prepared an extensive summary for Sherman’s book on what was
then known about this phenomenon. In his report, Dr. Uphoff naturally
referred quite a bit to noted EVP pioneers like Dr. Konstantin Raudive
and Frederich Juergenson, but he also made a reference to earlier
statements by George Hunt Williamson’s claims back in 1952. (No mention
about UFOs though.) He quoted a source that stated: “He collected many
cases of voice phenomena from all over the States, including commercial
transmitting stations.”

I shared a brief correspondence on this subject with Dr. Uphoff back in
1974. He had traveled to England and Europe and met a number of the
researchers and pioneers doing EVP studies, including Dr. Raudive. He
wrote: “Enough instances of individuals being addressed by name
unmistakably, and identifying themselves by names on the part of ‘the
voices’ that in my mind it virtually rules out the possibility that
these are ‘stray radio signals’ as some critics suggest. This is not to
say that material received by experimenters could not, at least at
times, originate from some source such as radio or TV transmissions,
but the growing number of experimenters who report voices from so many
and diverse places is adding up to a volume of information which cannot
be ignored.”

Dr. Uphoff also sent me a summary of data on what was known at that
time about all of this, responding to common questions that people
asked on this matter. Here was one:

“Why did Juergenson and Raudive (and others) conclude the voices came
from another dimension?”

“For several reasons. First they did not sound quite like normal
voices. The speed was often 1- to 2 times faster than normal speech and
usually there was a certain cadence in the voices. At times, two or
more distinct voices would be heard simultaneously as if several
entities were attempting to use the ‘mike’ at the same time.”

Could there be a connection with what John Keel was describing years
ago with those alien voices that were “like a speeded up phonograph
record” and the continuing EVP studies and experimentation that is
still ongoing?

On Saturday, August 7th (2010), we again successfully recorded another
spirit box session (again with similar results as to what was described
in my last column, which occurred on July 3rd). Again I wrote down
various words and names on paper, and again the mysterious “voices”
accurately read them back to us, several times, over the AM radio
frequencies! We had several digital recorders and video cameras going,
and six witnesses total.

During that session Bret Oldham asked of Keel, “Say your first and last
name.” Then it sounds like someone repeating, “First and last name.”
Then seven seconds later you hear a male sounding voice saying, “For a
pizza.” Interestingly, we had just enjoyed eating two large home baked
pizzas! At another point, I asked, “Could you say your name again, John
Keel.” Seven seconds later you hear a drawn out “Keel,” immediately
followed by “spirit box.”

“Sometimes I wonder if John Keel and others that pioneered much of this
are on the other side ‘helping’ us along on our journey and sort of
continuing their work while they are doing it,” Bret pondered in an
email just received.

As John Keel wrote at the conclusion of his article Mysterious Voices From Outer Space,
published in Saga’s UFO Report (Winter 1975): “Why don’t they contact
us? Hell, why don’t we contact them?”

On December 10, 1904, an unsettling article appeared in the English
newspaper, the Hexham Courant....under the heading of Wolf at Large in
Allendale:

“Local farmers from the village of Allendale, very near to Hexham, had
reported the loss of their livestock, so serious that many sheep were
being stabled at night to protect them. A shepherd found two of his
flock slaughtered, one with its entrails hanging out, and all that
remained of the other was its head and horns. Many of the sheep had
been bitten about the neck and the legs - common with an attack made by
a wolf.”

“Hysteria soon set in. During the night, lanterns were kept burning to
scare away the wolf, and women and children were ordered to keep to the
busy roads and be home before dusk. The ‘Hexham Wolf Committee’ was
soon set up to organize search parties and hunts to bring down the
beast using specialized hunting dogs, the ‘Haydon Hounds’, but even
they could not find the wolf. The Wolf Committee took the next step and
hired Mr. W. Briddick, a trained tracker. But he was also unsuccessful,
despite searching the woods.”

There was growing speculation that the most likely culprit was a grey
wolf that had escaped from its owner, Captain Bain of Shotley Bridge,
three months earlier. This wolf was on record in the Shotley Bridge
police station as being four and a half months old and not much of a
threat to either man or beast.

The search for the Wolf of Allendale continued throughout December. On
the 29th, it was faced down by two men, but escaped by jumping a high
wall. The following day, it was seen attacking a black-faced ewe,
running the sheep into a wire.

One afternoon in late December, according to the newspaper, the wolf
was encountered by some local boys and a group of women who frightened
the animal by screaming in their excitement.

The panic, however, seemed to be brought to a halt early in 1905, when
the body of a wolf was found on a railway line in Cumwinton, Cumbria,
some 30 miles (48km) west of Hexhamshire. Captain Bain sped to the
scene, only to profess the beast far too mature to be the cub he had
lost. The Hexham Courant reported on 7 January, 1905 that the wolf
found at Cumwinton was not the Wolf of Allendale.

By the end of 1905, reports had diminished sharply and interest began
to wane. Soon, the sightings and killings ceased altogether, and the
Wolf of Allendale was relegated to local history.

The events in Hexhamshire were not the only peculiar incidents at the
time. Charles Fort commented that this period seemed to see an
unprecedented level of weirdness that gripped Great Britain. These
incidents included strange lights and supernatural forces at work in
Wales, teleportation experiences, several hauntings and mysterious
fires that killed residents.

Overall, life in Hexhamshire went back to normal and it remain so for
several generations...until the Winter of 1972.

In February, 1972 the Robson boys were weeding their parent's garden
not 10 minutes walk from where the 'Wolf of Allendale' stalked the
woods. The pair soon unearthed two carved stone heads both about the
size of tennis balls. A few nights after the discovery, neighbour Ellen
Dodd was sitting up late with her daughter when both of them saw what
they described as a 'half-man/half-beast' enter the bedroom. Although
both mother and daughter screamed in terror, the creature seemed
disinterested and walked off down the stairs. It was heard to be
'padding down the stairs as if on its hind legs', and the front door
was later found open.

Dr. Anne Ross took an interest in the apparently Celtic carved stone
heads and took possession of the Hexham pair. She had several others
that were similar and wanted to compare them, believing these were at
least 2000 years old. Dr. Ross lived and worked in Southampton at the
time, and had heard nothing of the strange goings-on and apparent
return of the 'Wolf of Allendale' associated with the carved heads. A
few nights later at around 2.00am, she woke from sleep feeling cold and
frightened. Looking up she saw a strange figure in the doorway of her
bedroom. She later stated:

It was about six feet high, slightly stooping, and it was black,
against the white door, and it was half animal and half man. The upper
part, I would have said, was a wolf, and the lower part was human and,
I would have again said, that it was covered with a kind of black, very
dark fur. It went out and I just saw it clearly, and then it
disappeared, and something made me run after it, a thing I wouldn't
normally have done, but I felt compelled to run after it. I got out of
bed and I ran, and I could hear it going down the stairs, then it
disappeared towards the back of the house.

Dr. Ross simply dismiss the event as a nightmare, but when she later
returned home with her husband, archaeologist Richard Feacham, they
found their teenage daughter, Berenice, distraught and in tears. After
some coaxing she managed to explain the reason for her state, and Anne
suddenly realized that she had not been dreaming the night before. As
Berenice later told, she had returned to the empty house at 4.00pm. As
it opened the front door she saw a large shape rushing down the stairs
toward her. Halfway down, the thing suddenly stopped and vaulted the
banisters, landing with a soft thud like a heavy animal with thickly
padded feet.

Dr.Ross decided that the stone heads were the source of the problem,
and promptly disposed of her whole collection. The Hexham finds were
soon passed into the hands of other collectors, including the British
Museum, where they were displayed to the public for a short time until
reports of eerie occurrences forced them into storage.

Reportedly, the stone heads were examined at Southampton and Newcastle
Universities for proof of their age. Chemist Dr. Don Robins noticed
that the stone heads contained a large amount of quartz, therefore
hypothesizing that they were somehow storing energy. The heads were
later buried in an undisclosed location however, this resulted in
unusual goings on in the area of the burial. Now the heads seem to have
disappeared without a trace. These artifacts have disappeared from
public knowledge and their current whereabouts are unknown.

On a warm summer night in 1997, local Bigfoot researcher and part-time
gold-mining enthusiast William Allen Barnes was plunged headlong into
the world of cryptozoology.

(Barnes dislikes using the term Bigfoot due to its exploitation by
those who have tried to capitalize on, or trivialize the phenomenon,
preferring to use the term North American ape/hominoid.)

Barnes was camping alone near Greenhorn Creek, southeast of Grass
Valley California. He was asleep in a small pup tent with the rain flap
up when a loud noise woke him sometime after midnight.

“About 1 or 2, I heard this thing coming down the canyon and I could
hear it walking around,” Barnes said. “I figured it was a bear.”

As he listened and tried to catch a glimpse of what was approaching, he
began to realize that it might be something completely unfamiliar to
him.

“I could see this dark blob and when it got about thirty feet from my
car, I noticed how tall it looked above the hood,” he said. “I thought,
‘Oh my gosh, it can't be a bear.' It got to the car, then headed
straight toward my tent.”

What happened next is something that Barnes says has haunted him ever
since, and fueled his desire to prove the existence of a giant creature
most consider well outside the realm of possibility.

“It was looking down on me through the flap in the tent and I had no
place to go, no gun and no flashlight,” Barnes said. “My heart was
beating so loudly, I could hear it pounding in my ears. When it turned
sideways, I saw how thick it was and I realized it had no neck and
didn't seem to have a nose. It looked ape-like.”

Eventually, the creature — which Barnes guessed to weigh somewhere
between 450 and 500 pounds — seemed to lose interest, turning to walk
up a nearby hill and disappearing into the darkness.

“After it left, the adrenaline hit me and I just sat there and shook,”
Barnes said. “I got up the next morning and left. It took me four years
to go back out there into the canyon by myself, and my gun got bigger
every year.”

Since that time, Barnes has driven himself to find out as much as he
can about the creature he encountered, while thinking of possible ways
that he could prove its existence.

In the last decade, he has joined forces with several other
researchers, namely Jason Valenti (SasquatchResearch.net) and William
Dranginis (VirginiaBigfootResearch.org), to initiate the Falcon Project
to capture motion picture evidence of a hominoid.

The plan is to travel to hominoid hot spots in the U.S. and Canada
where multiple sightings have been reported, and to nightly launch a
remote-controlled blimp, using thermal imaging, carbon dioxide
recognition and high-tech audio equipment to track what is below.

The camera on board will be so powerful that it can zoom in on objects
with almost microscopic detail from as high as 2,000 feet and will be
able to film from any angle, Barnes said.

“The airship is actually two helium-filled blimps held together by
graphite and will float in the same way a catamaran does,” Barnes said.
“We'll be searching in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, British
Columbia, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Virginia, Eastern Tennessee
around the Smoky Mountains and Florida.”

Barnes estimates the trip could last as long as a year and will cost in
the neighborhood of $190,000.

The airship is to be manufactured by a Canadian company and the
equipment used to operate and monitor the

Falcon will be housed inside an RV that Barnes and his cohorts will
travel in.

The group is still in the process of raising the necessary funds, but
Barnes believes the wait will not be much longer.

It would be easy for the casual reader to dismiss the Falcon project,
its founder and the creature it seeks to uncover, but remember the
coelacanth, a fish thought to be extinct for at least 65 million years,
found alive when a specimen was caught in South Africa in 1938.

There have been other documented sightings since then, including
discovery of a second species of coelacanths found in Indonesia in 1999.

And think too of explorers like German businessman Heinrich Schliemann,
who in 1868 discovered the ancient city of Troy, while the rest of the
archaeological world was convinced it was only a legend.

When discussing hominoids with Barnes, it's difficult not to be struck
by his earnestness and the missionary-like zeal with which he
approaches his subject. He very much appears a true believer propelled
by “scientific revelation.”

“We want to film a hominoid over a long period of time, so that
scientists can then study its movements,” Barnes said. “I'm not trying
to prove something that others don't already know. I'm just trying to
film it in its natural habitat.”

For more information about Barnes and the Falcon Project, go to
www.Bigfoot24-7.com.

I first heard the word “contactee” when I was interviewing abduction
researcher Budd Hopkins in 1989. For Hopkins, a contactee was
beneath contempt, a slap in the face to serious scientific researchers
struggling to understand a powerful mystery in plausible, objective
terms. A beautiful blonde man taking a wide-eyed contactee on a
trip to Venus all the while warning of impending nuclear annihilation
strained belief to such an extent that Hopkins dreaded the thought that
his own research would be tarred with the same brush of ridicule and
sneering that greeted the contactees.

However, Tim Beckley of Global Communications chooses to differ with
that point of view as he tirelessly revives and reprints books that
have come to be classics of contactee literature. This
article/review will focus on the work of a woman named Thelma B.
Terril, or as she is more frequently called, “Tuella.” Tuella is
best known for channeling various alien entities known collectively as
the Ashtar Command.

THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF ASHTAR

The existence of the Ashtar Command was first publicly proclaimed by
pioneering contactee George Van Tassel. In a book called "The
Lure of the Edge", written by Dr. Brenda Denzler, Van Tassel is called
“the most important person for the propagation and perpetuation of the
contactee movement.”

“In 1952,” Denzler writes, “Van Tassel announced in his book "I Rode a
Flying Saucer" that he had made contact with a variety of beings aboard
spaceships circling the earth. The purpose of their interest in
Earth was to help raise humanity’s ‘vibratory’ level and thus redeem us
from our savage ways.”

While awaiting the fulfillment of that alien promise, Van Tassel was
told to build the Integratron, a large fifty-five foot circular
structure that was intended to serve as a combination rejuvenation
machine and time machine. With donations from his followers, the
structure was completed near his desert home at Giant Rock, California.

But, according to Denzler, Van Tassel’s most important role in UFO
history was undoubtedly as the sponsor of annual contactee conventions
at Giant Rock from 1953 until 1977.

“These gatherings provided a way for contactees and their followers to
gather and compare stories, sell books, give lectures and form
networks. At the height of the contactee movement in the
mid-1950s there were more than 150 flying saucer contact clubs
organized in the United States alone.”

The contactee movement’s use of “channeling” would later become a
popular form of insight and information for the New Age movement that
came after. Denzler quotes Michael F. Brown on the subject, who
says channeling can be defined as, “the use of altered states of
consciousness to contact spirits or to experience spiritual energy
captured from other times and dimensions.”

TELEPATHY AND CHANNELING

While some contactees claimed to have had face-to-face meetings with
aliens, other contactees communicated with the space brothers only by
using the kind of telepathy made popular by spiritualists and
occultists decades earlier.

“George Van Tassel was also primarily a telepathic contactee,” Denzler
explains, “who made a distinctive contribution to modern New Age
thought. Among the many space people with whom he reportedly
communicated, one in particular has risen to prominence among New Agers
and remains a source of wisdom in certain UFO circles, Ashtar.
Today there is a small but significant number of people who claim to
channel messages from ‘Ashtar Command,’ and many more who take these
messages seriously.”

The Wikipedia online encyclopedia also offers a history of Van Tassel
and his contact with Ashtar. During his weekly channeling
sessions at Giant Rock, the Ashtar messages, (which had initially
contained a great deal of apocalyptic material, some of which focused
on the development of the hydrogen bomb) began to grow more
elaborate. Details began to emerge of the purported existence of
an extraterrestrial “government” which claimed to closely monitor
activities on Earth and offered “material and spiritual support” to its
citizens.

“This concept of an ‘Ashtar Command’ was appropriated for use by a
number of prominent early channelers, both inside and outside the Giant
Rock community, and was soon being utilized by several in the context
of their own personal claimed messages from Ashtar, along with the use
of the figure of Ashtar himself, originally developed by Van Tassel,”
says the Wikipedia posting.

Van Tassel and several other chanelers began to publish accounts which
predicted the imminent arrival of an Ashtar-led UFO armada on Earth,
intended to guide and protect mankind. When the predictions never
came to pass, and when differing messages claimed to be directly from
Ashtar created considerable confusion, the overall movement went into
decline.

TUELLA AND ASHTAR’S COMEBACK

It was left to Tuella to revive and re-energize the concept of an
Ashtar Command. Some twenty years later, in the 1970s and 1980s,
Tuella wrote a series of books on the subject based on channeled
messages received from the Ashtar Command.

“Her work,” Wikipedia says, “shifted the focus from Van Tassel’s
extraterrestrial model to a more ‘spiritualized’ approach.
Tuella’s version of the Ashtar narrative tended to play down the
necessity of the direct involvement of UFOs in human affairs, with the
shift of importance being laid onto purely interior spiritual
development as a means of reaching ‘higher dimensions’ and receiving
the assistance of Ashtar Command.”

In spite of Tuella’s influence, many channelers continued to insist on
a more UFO-based cosmology and maintained that Ashtar was still sending
messages about the imminent destruction of Earth and the need for a
literal physical evacuation of the planet to be carried out by
the spacecraft of the Ashtar Command.

Which, as it turns out, is a concept Tuella would also make her
own. Eventually, in a book published by Tim Beckley’s Inner Light
Publications, called "Project World Evacuation", Tuella lays out in
exquisite detail the promise that some UFOs will assist in the “great
exodus” of human souls off this planet. She quotes Ashtar as
saying, “You will be hosted by us, fed and housed comfortably in a
great mother ship.” Another entity, called Andromeda Rex, even
volunteered information about the food: “It will be as nearly
normal to your accustomed foods as we can arrange it. It will
include some drinks and foods that are new to you, but we are
attempting a cuisine that will be favorable to all, with personal
choices where needed.”

It is comforting to know that the Chosen Ones will be well-fed in outer
space, but the most joyous aspect of the great adventure will be “in
the mingling of beings from all worlds,” when the evacuated earthlings
will be introduced to their galaxy and universe.

The exact time of the great evacuation is not known of course, but is
contingent on events on Earth. For example, one message given in
Project World Evacuation declares that, “We will not allow the entire
planet to be destroyed. If atomic warfare does become activated, that
will be the point of immediate mass evacuation by us of the prepared
citizens of the Earth.”

SOME BIBLICAL CONNECTIONS

That statement echoes similar statements made by Jesus in the
Gospel. Jesus says that no man knows the day or the hour of his
coming, nor do the angels in heaven. God the Father alone knows
when that will be. There have been so many unfortunate attempts
to predict that moment, attempts made by both Christian believers and
contactees that have resulted in disappointment and increased cynicism
among believers and skeptics alike. We are clearly told the
moment is not knowable, so it behooves us to quit trying to know it.

Jesus also said that he must return in all his glory “lest no flesh
survive.” In a manner similar to Tuella’s contacts, we are told
that divine intervention is a prerequisite for man’s survival.
Man by himself can never negotiate the kind of lasting peace that will
ensure his survival, nor can he by himself extricate himself from the
environmental decay he has mired himself in.

The fact that the Bible’s prophecies are in tune to Tuella’s channeled
material speaks volumes about their having come from the same
source. That source is happily both life-affirming and forward
looking. One must look past the frightening predictions of doom
and ruin to see that the real point is the salvation of mankind and not
his destruction.

FOR WHOM IT IS INTENDED

Tuella also knows her audience. She is not preaching to the
masses but rather to a specialized group prepared to understand her.

“Just as many are called but few are chosen,” Tuella writes, “likewise,
many who read this book will neither understand nor receive the
information. But those special souls for whom it is intended will
rejoice in its guidance and accept its timely and imperative
revelation.

“This information is not entertainment,” she continues. “It is
comparable to ‘sealed orders’ given to dedicated volunteers on a
strategic mission. It is dispersed to them, compiled for them and
will be cherished by them. It is neither defended nor
justified. It is data recorded as given and passed on to those
for whom it is intended.”

There is a vaguely militaristic overtone to some of that passage; the
phrases like “sealed orders” and “strategic mission” seem to imply that
the Ashtar Command speaking through Tuella is extremely
well organized and is definitely playing for keeps. But when
you’re talking about the rescue and salvation of yourself and your
loved ones, who would have it otherwise?

A more recent offering of Tuella’s work as a channeler is Global
Communications’ "Master Symbol of the Solar Cross". The book
attempts to introduce the reader to a higher reality by teaching him to
understand a series of visual symbols within simple circles and crosses
and other geometrical forms there lies our intimate connection to the
divine.

In an early section of "Master Symbol of the Solar Cross", Tuella
channels the following: “In the ancient history of the people of the
planet Terra, sacred symbols were used in teaching all the basic
principles of nature. Everything was taught in the simplest, most
comprehensive language of symbols, used as object lessons, that could
be understood by anyone. All were taught in stages, where sight
would supply the absence of spoken words. At every step the
student was confronted with symbols of the omnipresent power and wisdom
of the Creator.”

Tuella seems to be talking about a system of visual symbols that
predate spoken language in people, something more primal and profound
than mere words. I remember reading about Whitley Strieber’s
experience of encountering alien symbols during an abduction. A
simple sign, such as Tuella’s solar cross, would be shown to him, and
he realized the little graphic symbol contained countless “words,”
limitless depths of meaning, but all contained in a few well placed
strokes of an alien “pen.”

I’m also reminded of the experience of Becky Andreasson, the daughter
of the well-known, devoutly Christian abductee Betty Andreasson
Luca. Becky wrote about a continual educational process in which
she believed she was being taught an angelic language, a language
perhaps consisting of the same deeply-layered symbols that Tuella is
channeling.

It is so encouraging to be able to see the picture that emerges when
one combines Tuella’s symbols with the experiences of Strieber and
Andreasson. One can see the faint glimmering of the overall
master plan and take heart that in spite of the fact that we’re not at
the top of the cosmic chain of command, a superior force really is
extending a helping hand and maneuvering to raise us to a level
comparable to theirs. Strieber once said it’s as though we are
being prepared to become friends with God, not merely his infantile,
disobedient children.

In the Book of Revelation, Chapter 21, verses 3-4, it is written,
“Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with
them, and they shall be his people, and God Himself will be with them,
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no
more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for
the former things have passed away.”

Perhaps the fulfillment of those verses will come at a time when we
have learned to converse with God in a language that is worthy of Him,
a system of words much more profound than the one we struggle to
express ourselves with now. And maybe the symbols explained by Tuella
are part of that bridge between mortal groping and eternal heavenly
bliss that is a necessary component of true communication with the
divine.

TIM BECKLEY REMEMBERS TUELLA

Though Tuella was somewhat of a recluse -- especially when she became
ill and needed hospitalization -- she did get her channeled messages
out to as many of her followers through regular newsletters that talked
primarily about End time visions. Publisher Tim Beckley says she was
the best and most respected of all the channels who claimed to have
been receiving messages from the Ashtar Command.

Beckley says he met Tuella only once and was very impressed with her.

"I was the MC of a space convention in Reno and we spent some time
together. We even tossed a few quarters into the slot machines on the
casino floor-- neither one of us being 'directed' to win by the space
brothers as it turned out. I have very fond memories of the few
days we spent together. I was impressed by her sincerity. She was not a
'fruit cake' or a nutter, nor did it appear that she was 'in this' to
make a quick buck.

"A year or two after the Reno conference, I received a phone call from
Tuella in which she told me that she had recently had a heart attack
and had been hospitalized and realized that she was not long for this
earthly coil. She needed someone she 'could trust' to preserve the
messages she had purportedly received from members of the Ashtar
Command. She was also in need of financial support that would help get
her through the final days of her life. I made what for this field was
a ‘nice offer’ to obtain the rights to all her works and have kept them
in print to this day despite a somewhat thinning market for channeled
material."

Beckley is quick to point out that he neither believes nor disbelieves
in the messages themselves. "They stand on their own,” he said. Nor can
he prove that the messages are really from aliens. But he does believe
that Tuella's works offer a legitimate look at both the contactee and
channeling movements, which are most definitely an important part of
the history of the flying saucer and New Age movements, regardless of
the legitimacy of their content.

"People have the right to make up their own minds based on all the
facts,” Beckley said. “And these books will help to clarify your belief
or disbelief."